This photo, taken by a foreigner visiting Pyongyang last year, shows a North Korean girl wearing “I Love Jesus” T-shirt.
/ Courtesy of Radio Free Asia |
By Kim Se-jeong
Staff Reporter
A recently released photo of a North Korean girl offers a contradiction to what has been known about the Communist country's religious freedom and the extent of freedom made available to outsiders.
The photo made public by the Radio Free Asia based in Washington, D.C has a young girl wearing a white T-shirt with an illustration and a sentence, "I ♡ Jesus."
The picture was taken in Pyongyang by an anonymous photographer, and submitted to the radio station by Curtis Melvin, an American economist. He also runs a blog, "North Korean Economic Watch"
Melvin said, "In a society where religious freedom is completely deprived, people wearing a shirt like that are found to be very interesting."
Repression on religious freedom in North Korea is widely known.
According to accounts from North Korean defectors and Christian missionaries who have helped North Koreans defect from the Communist country, the regime shows zero-tolerabce to those who develop a religious affiliation.
If caught, they are tortured and sent to a concentration camp.
This photo was released just in time. A human rights advocacy organization Human Rights Watch reported Wednesday the human rights abuses in North Korea including religious freedom "remain dire."
Melvin quoted the photographer as saying he asked the girl whether she knew what it meant on the shirt, and she answered no.
The photo indicates that commodities from third countries, especially from the Western hemisphere, are no longer filtered as thoroughly as used to be.
The North Korean government has banned clothes with English letters since 1990. In addition, blue jeans that are commonly worn everywhere in the world is banned because the jeans are considered to be the spirit of America, the North's old enemy.
Another question rises over how the photographer captured the scena. In North Korea, foreigners' interaction with local people is strictly prohibited.
Local guides are always at present ― no matter whether a visitor's trip is official or not ― keeping eyes on them to prevent local contacts.
Yet, from what it's shown in the photo, the photographer is in the middle of a big crowd, and the girl poses for a camera.
One European diplomat in South Korea, who has been to North Korea for vacation said that North Koreans, who have interaction with foreigners, face legal punishment, if they get caught.
Plus, the diplomat said, in reality, local interaction is hard to be realized because of language barrier.
skim@koreatimes.co.kr
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